Bhim Army chief detained while on his way to join Bharat Bandh protest

Lucknow: Bhim Army chief Chandrashekhar Azad was detained on Tuesday at his residence in Saharanpur by Uttar Pradesh Police when he was leaving to join the Bharat Bandh call of the protesting farmers.

Chandrashekhar Azad tweeted saying, “India has again gone back into the Emergency era today. Our providers, the farmers need us, but the police under the Yogi government have detained me since morning.

Last Tuesday (December 1), Chandrashekhar Azad visited farmers at the Singhu border entry point on the Delhi-Ghaziabad route to extend his party’s support to the cause.

“I have come to extend support so that farmers don’t feel left alone. Farmers, Dalits and labourers are all the same. If the farmer will not cultivate his land, how will a labourer run his household? I come from a family of labourers. How can I abandon the farmers cause?” he had said.

Azad asserted that he just came to extend moral support and not lead the farmers’ protest, adding that farmers did not come out on the roads happily.

Meanwhile, leaders of farmers organisations, the Samajwadi Party and the Congress were either taken into custody or put under house arrest across Uttar Pradesh to prevent them from holding demonstrations during the Bharat Bandh.

On the shutdown, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has said maintaining peace and order in the state is the top priority of the government, adding that in no case there should be any compromise on the law and order front.

The farmers’ organisations have staged demonstrations in different places in the rural areas of Lucknow. More than a dozen farmer leaders have been detained at different places. Section 144 has been imposed in the capital Lucknow.